Fleece-laying machines for laying nonwoven material and consolidation devices installed thereafter for the nonwoven material, e.g., needle looms for needling the nonwoven material, are known.
Fleece-laying machines can be designed as camel-back fleece layers or as horizontal layers. In each case, a laying carriage moves back and forth in a fixed rhythm over an output conveyor belt. At least two web conveyor belts in the fleece-laying machine serve to transport a card web to the laying nip in the laying carriage. The card webs are fed through the laying nip and deposited on the output conveyor belt. Because of the back-and-forth movement of the laying carriage and the forward movement of the output conveyor belt, a multi-layer fleece with the various card web layers lying at an angle to each other is obtained.
To produce nonwoven material with a uniform basis weight, it is standard practice to change the speed of the output conveyor belt in synchrony with the speed of the laying carriage, so that the edges of the card webs are straight and the various layers overlap precisely. This means that the output conveyor belt is moved in cycles at variable speed, wherein, as a rule, the output conveyor belt does not move at all for short periods of the time at the points where the laying carriage reverses direction.
The nonwoven material produced by the fleece-laying machine is then transported onward for consolidation to a consolidation device, e.g., a water-jet consolidation device, or a needle loom, which normally comprise a continuous intake. At the transfer point between the output conveyor belt of the fleece-laying machine and the consolidation device, irregularities occur in the nonwoven material to be consolidated due to the different types of movement which the two machines perform.